What's New in Computers at GECDSB?

If you haven't looked at it lately, you owe it to yourself to check it out now. The Ontario Curriculum Unit Planner, Secondary Pilot Version March 2001 shows the product a great deal closer to maturity than ever.

No longer do you get a "few" units installed along with the planner. That's because there are literally close to a hundred units available to Ontario teachers. Instead, there are now two additional tabs available in the Unit Library section. Both indices let you browse entire collections of the Curriculum Units. The CD Index grants access to those units that come shipped on the CD-ROM. The Web Index queries the Curriculum Unit Planner website to let you see everything that is available at any given moment. The registration link when you first enrol as an author also puts you on a mailing list that lets you know just when a new unit goes online.

At the secondary school level, groups of units are placed together to form complete Course Profiles. The Web Index reveals that there are a small number of units available for download to address Grade 10 courses.

Grade 4 Units from the Web Index	Grade 10 Profiles from the Web Index

Greater Essex County secondary school teachers have one additional advantage. In an attempt to address curriculum planning for the new Grade 11 courses, our district joined in a consortium to complete a number of Grade 11 units. GECDSB contributed to the completion of the ICS 3M and BAI 3E courses. You can download a complete archive from the Computer Science and Business Education sections of First Class.

The balance of the materials from the consortium is available to Grade 11 teachers. Recently, at the follow up to last spring's "Assessment Matters" Minicourse, participants were given a CD-ROM with all of the resources in one place. Hopefully, this will provide valuable assistance in the planning and delivery of these new courses. Our contact during this project was Bruce Dureno, Teacher Consultant for Professional Development.

More information about the Ontario Curriculum Unit Planner is available from the planner website. http://planner.media-x.com